


Make Me Free

by MintSauce



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Terry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 22:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3357200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been years, but it all comes rushing back when Mickey sees him again. It also makes him realise some things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Me Free

**Author's Note:**

> So I've spent all day eating chocolate with my roommate and watching Love, Rosie. The ending is maybe a little sappy, but it's Valentines day (or it was 47 minutes ago) so I'd say I was allowed.
> 
> To that person who gave me the prompt for Ian and Mickey on valentines day, I'm sorry, but I tried and I just couldn't write anything decent. I hope this is alright instead.

It feels like all of the air has been sucked from the room.

            It feels like he’s drowning and been set on fire and like everything is all happening at once. It feels weird. Like he’s angry and sad and maybe that little bit sort of happy maybe somewhere deep inside, but all at once. He doesn’t know how to process that.

            But Mickey never thought seeing him again would be a walk in the park.

            The idiots he works with – his _friends_ he supposes – are still talking. They haven’t noticed he’s frozen yet. But they will. How could they not?

            Mickey’s just sitting there in the booth, staring and thinking.

He pictures red hair and broken smiles.

He pictures a head snapping back and _redred_ blood running down a chin, dripping onto a chest.

He pictures a moment of complete happiness and then one of complete pain.

He pictures all the mess that came afterwards.

He pictures fear, fear so strong it drives you to do stupid things.

For a very brief second he thinks about what it would feel like, to stand up and walk over there. To smash a chair over the brute’s fat fucking head and just revel in causing him pain. Trying to cause him as much pain as he’d caused Mickey. Not that that was possible.

For that, he’d have to set all the man cared about on fire a thousand times over. Terry doesn’t care about anything that much.

For a second he lets himself imagine it, but then he thinks about the soft look on Ian’s face when he wakes up in the morning to see his head on the other pillow. He thinks of that feeling he gets in his chest when he sees the other man. He thinks about how he’d hate to have that cut to a few minutes either side of scratched glass again, phone pressed against his ear and none of the words he wants to coming out of his mouth.

But mostly, Mickey thinks about how he’s finally happy. More than. And he doesn’t need validation from some pissing off psychotic prick to acknowledge that.

So Mickey mutters an excuse to his friends and he slips out the back door before the man he used to call Dad can notice him. He holds out three blocks before he starts to run, sprinting like the hounds of hell are on his tail.

He runs until his heart feels like it’s about to burst out of his chest and he’s crashing into his apartment door. His fingers are clumsy as he tries to dig out his keys, shaking so badly he can’t fit them into the lock. It doesn’t matter though, because the door is being jerked open and Ian’s wide eyed and worried. He’s saying, “Mickey- _what!?!”_ And he looks so concerned and goddamn beautiful and fuck, but they made it. Didn’t they? They’re still here and they’re happy.

It knocks the breath out of them when their lips crash together, but Mickey doesn’t care and he doesn’t give Ian time to consider whether or not he wants to. He just pushes forwards like he’s trying to crawl into the redhead’s body and he thinks maybe he’s crying a little, but that’s okay.

Ian is the one to pull back. He holds Mickey’s face in his hands, kicks the apartment door shut and he shushes him like he’s some fucking child. His expression is so soft and it’s just everything Mickey never thought he could have. It makes him smile like he’s an idiot and he grips Ian’s hip, slips his thumb under the edge of his t-shirt to touch skin.

Just like every time, it’s like sparks shooting up his arms.

“Mick?” Ian asks and Mickey hadn’t known there could be so many loaded questions crammed into his name, but there you go. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he replies. For once, he means it. He completely, utterly means it. How could anything be wrong when there’s this stupid fucking sappy, alien-looking idiot in front of him, who actually wants to be in the middle of all this bullshit with Mickey. “I just. . .”

He trails off, tries to think of the right words to fit this moment he thinks they’re having.

He takes a long breath, kissing Ian again, once, twice and a third time because he’s an addict and he’s not quitting any time soon. Ian’s looking a little baffled, but he also looks amused, so it’s not a bad thing maybe.

“I guess I’m just really glad you came to get that fucking gun back,” he settles on in the end.

It’s not everything he wants to say, but they have time for Mickey to find the words for all the rest of it.

Ian’s always been fluent in Mickey anyway.

Ian’s grin is infectious and he leans in, presses their foreheads together in a way that feels more intimate than anything else they’ve ever done. It takes Mickey right back to a moment curled together in Ian’s shitty childhood bed, still smack bang in the middle of all the shit they didn’t know how to crawl out of yet.

“Me too,” Ian says. “Yeah… me too.”

It’ll only be later, when they’re hiding under the covers of their bed like children and Mickey’s counting the freckles on Ian’s shoulder and way too tired to even try to pay attention to the kisses Ian’s peppering his face with. It’ll only be then that Mickey will work out what it was he really wanted to say to Ian.

He wanted to tell him about a broken boy looking at a shattered one and saying, “You’re not free.” He wanted to tell him about a patched together man and a man who’s pieces have finally been picked back up again and say, “I am now. With you, I’m free now.”

Because he was.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentines Day. You're all beautiful, wherever you are!
> 
> My tumblr is themintsauce come chill with me!


End file.
